4 Police Officers Shot After Traffic Stop in Oakland

People lingered at the scene of Saturday's traffic-stop shooting. About 20 bystanders taunted police.

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That's just sick.

March 21, 2009
4 Police Officers Shot After Traffic Stop in Oakland

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:36 p.m. ET

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) -- Four officers were in critical condition and a suspect dead on Saturday after gunfire at a traffic stop led to a massive manhunt that ended in a shootout, police said.

Two officers were shot in the first incident just after 1 p.m. after they stopped the suspect's vehicle in east Oakland, said Oakland police spokesman Jeff Thomason.

The suspect fled the scene on foot into a nearby neighborhood, police said, leading to an intense manhunt by dozens of Oakland police, California Highway Patrol officers and Alameda County sheriff deputies. Streets were roped off and an entire area of east Oakland closed to traffic.

At about 3:30 p.m. officers, acting on an anonymous tip, found the suspect, who had barricaded himself in a building.

''We had SWAT officers go into that building and that's where the second shooting took place,'' said Thomason.

The suspect was killed during the exchange, and two more officers wounded.

All four officers are in critical condition at Highland Hospital, Thomason said. Dozens of people, including other officers gathered outside the hospital awaiting word of their colleagues' condition.

Acting Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan said the department was still investigating.

''At this point we don't believe there are other people involved, but it's too early to tell,'' he said.

Tension between police and the community has escalated since the New Year's Day fatal shooting of unarmed 22-year-old Oscar Grant by a transit police officer. That former Bay Area Rapid Transit officer, Johannes Mehserle, has pleaded not guilty to a murder charge.

Violent protests erupted on the streets of Oakland in the weeks after Grant's death.

People lingered at the scene of Saturday's traffic-stop shooting. About 20 bystanders taunted police.

The mood was somber outside the police station in east Oakland as the investigation continued. Officers hugged and consoled each other.

''This is a highly sensitive situation that we're dealing with right now with our OPD family, and we're still trying to notify family members that their family members were hurt,'' Thomason said.

OAKLAND, Calif. — Four Oakland, Calif., police officers were shot to death in two separate incidents involving one suspect near the Eastmont police substation Saturday afternoon, law enforcement sources said.

The first shooting happened in the 7400 block of MacArthur Boulevard about 1:16 p.m. PDT when two motorcycle officers were wounded. What led to the shooting was not immediately known.

About 3:20 p.m., two more police officers were hit in an exchange of gunfire with the suspect while trying to take him into custody in the 2700 block of 74th Avenue. That suspect was shot and killed.

Google "Oakland + riders" and you will read of four cops who decided they were basically going to re-enact their own version of Training Day, Internal Affairs etc. The city hadn't really healed from that before the BART thing happened. A BART cop, different agency from Oakland but not really all that different in the eyes of the public, shot and killed an unarmed man who was lying on his stomach. The police commissioner's office played hide-and-seek for a week while person after person took their cell phone videos to the local TV station. Only because of those videos did the cops finally own up to what happened. Without the videos, there is no doubt in my mind it would have been written up as "perp got aggressive, cop tried sanctioned restraint techniques, perp got free, gun went off."

There are a lot of questions to be answered on this one. Random traffic stop goes that bad? Could be, but the police agencies don't have a huge reservoir of goodwill and credibility. That recent David Simon story about police reporting, or lack thereof, has echoed in my mind since I first heard this news.

It looks more like the earlier report was erroneous, but then I just looked at the SF Chronicle's site and while they say that three are dead, they also include this quote from the Governor:

"All four officers dedicated their lives to public safety and selflessly worked to protect the people of Oakland," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a statement. "Maria and I join the Bay Area in remembering their service and honoring their sacrifice."